Of or Like a Gladiator

On occasion, a sportscaster will let slip the comparison of an athlete to a gladiator. It isn’t true, of course, because athletes almost always get to see another day. But the metaphor works as an appeal to our dark sides. Long ago, ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” cleaned it up with the tagline of “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” while showing clips of a skier and motorcycle driver wiping out bigtime. In baseball, nobody really watches to see a batter get hit the way Tony Conigliaro did. But in football and boxing, we sit there watching and knowing that the next hit or punch could be fatal. Whatever the sport, athletes know each appearance could be their last, due to injury or age or both. What goes unsaid but understood by athlete and audience adds to the draw of the game, the competition. Beware the blindside and the left hook. Some athletes take a pass on the gladiator gig. Warren Spahn knew when to hang it up; his body at the age of 44 told him, that and his release by the Giants. But Muhammad Ali kept stepping into the ring until it effectively killed him, or set into motion the bodily reactions to constant beatings that did. And now Lindsey Vonn is carried was airlifted off a slope in Italy. Rather than stay retired, Vonn tried a comeback at age 41. Unlike Warren Spahn, Vonn didn’t see herself as a coach or cattle rancher. Nor did she see an athlete diminished by age. Sunday, Vonn clipped a gate seconds into her run, possibly a result of the torn ACL she suffered nine days before. Pinwheels can be pretty, but not when skiers do them down a slope. Vonn reportedly will need multiple surgeries to repair a broken left leg. It’s not that Vonn made a right or wrong decision. It’s simply that she made a decision with consequences. The highest of accolades or a stretcher for a shield. The latter-day gladiator fell, a worldwide audience watched and reacted in a way that defined them as human beings.